Want To Own A Share Of The Green Bay Packers? Buy A Piece Of The Team For $300, But Don't Expect Dividends Or A Gain

The only publicly traded National Football League team is offering shares to the public for just the sixth time in history. Here are the details.

What Happened: The Green Bay Packers are offering shares of the team for sale beginning Nov. 16.

Shares will be sold at a price of $300 each and an additional undisclosed handling fee. Shares will be limited to residents of the U.S., Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The team is selling 300,000 shares, which could raise $90 million for the team. The share offer will run to Feb. 25, 2022, with the possibility of an extension.

Consumers can use credit cards, debit cards, electronic bank transfers, personal checks or cashier’s checks to make their purchases. Shares can be bought as gifts for others.

Shareholders are limited to buying 200 shares, including any shares that were purchased in the last two sales (1997-1998, 2011-2012). Shares were sold for $250 each in the 2011-2012 sale, which raised $67 million.

“We appreciate the interest that fans have expressed in our sixth stock offering,” Packers CEO Mark Murphy said.

The Packers plan on using the money raised for improvements at Lambeau Field, the team’s home since 1957. NFL rules require money raised in a stock sale to be used for stadium projects and not operating expenses.

Prior to the current stock offering, there are 361,300 shareholders that own 5,009,400 shares of the team.

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Why It’s Important: Unlike sports teams that are publicly traded on major stock exchanges, shares of the Packers can not be bought or sold and don’t appreciate in value or offer dividends.

Shares can be transferred to family members. A Packers' stock certificate acts as the ultimate piece of fan memorabilia and as a donation to the team. Shareholders are also able to vote for the Packers’ Board of Directors.

“Stock in the Packers does not constitute an investment in ‘stock’ in the common sense of the term,” the Packers said in Monday’s announcement.

No NFL teams trade on exchanges, compared to MLB, NBA and NHL teams such as the Atlanta Braves, and the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, which are offered as Liberty Braves Group BATRA and Madison Square Garden Sports Corp MSGS, respectively.

The Packers are the third oldest NFL team and have one of the most loyal fan bases in all of professional sports. The waitlist for Packers’ season tickets is one of the well-known stories in the sports world with more than 139,000 currently on it.

Popular sports reporter Darren Rovell put his name on the waitlist 15 years ago and sits at position 54,855 as of October, moving up around 20,000 places in the 15 years.

The Packers are valued at $3.475 billion by Forbes, ranking 13th on the annual list of NFL team valuations.

The Packers have the most league championships with 13, including Super Bowl titles in 1966, 1967, 1996 and 2010.

Photo: Mike Morebeck via Flickr Creative Commons